#WhyIStayed: Understanding Domestic Violence

Janay and Ray Rice

On March 27th, 2014, former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was arrested and indicted for third-degree aggravated assault. He had punched his fiancee, Janay Palmer, in the face, knocking her unconscious. Shortly afterward the assault in February, a video of Ray Rice dragging Palmer out of an elevator was released by TMZ. I have not watched this video, or the one released on Monday, because of a tweet I was lucky enough to see on my feed:

We chirped over release of nudes of white movie star and are passing around video of beating of black woman…we need to talk about consent.

What Young Feminists Need To Know About The Hobby Lobby Ruling

As a rising college senior, I’ve already been inundated with cautionary tales of being female while working in corporate America. Now, thanks to the recent Hobby Lobby ruling, my generation of women can add potentially working for companies whose rights are valued above our own and the blatant undermining of our health and reproductive freedom to the list of our future professional rewards.

Monday’s Hobby Lobby ruling solidifies the reality of the war on women in this country, indisputably highlighting the way in which sexism is still rampant in American society in several ways.

First and foremost, the decision reveals that persistent, blatant ignorance about women’s bodies has infiltrated the law of the land. The Hobby Lobby suit incorrectly conflates birth control with pregnancy termination by objecting to insurance …

Help the Obama Administration Fight Sexual Assault On College Campuses

Universities have a responsibility to protect students from violence, discrimination, harassment, and assault. When something violent happens to students on or off campus, universities have a responsibility to handle these cases in an appropriate way that keeps the campus community and the victim safe. Given this extremely basic responsibility that schools owe to their tuition-paying students, it’s incredible how frequently students’ rights are violated after reporting sexual assault. It’s incredible how incapable universities have been at protecting students who have been assaulted. It’s incredible how often victims of sexual assault also become victims of illegal institutionalized rape apologism.

In response to these universities’ failures to protect victims, there’s been a wave of students bringing their cases to the federal level. Victims across the country have been reporting their universities’ illegal …

Saturday Vids: Income Inequality and HOPE Credit Union

I’m currently taking a sociology class called “Perspectives on Inequality” and the first major issue we’ve addressed is the current state of income inequality in the United States. The U.S. is the most wealth-unequal country in the world and it’s an issue that’s getting worse over time. For instance, incomes of the bottom 90% of Americans grew only $59 (adjusted for inflation) from 1966 to 2011, while incomes for the top 10% rose by $116,071 (more stats can be found here). It’s also no secret that income inequality — while a serious issue for American society at large — is also undeniably gendered.

Luckily, there are some people out there trying to address this problem: like William Bynum and the HOPE Credit Union, which “empowers communities with member-owned …

Saturday Vids: Victims of Acid Attacks

[TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENT IMAGES]

According to Stop Acid Attacks, acid attacks are “a prevalent way for a man to inflict revenge on a woman, who has either turned down his interest or insulted him some way.” Women are attacked with sulfuric acid by men, often in public, and men are rarely charged. To learn more about this violent act of misogyny, check out this video recently posted. To learn more about what you can do, check out Stop Acid Attacks’ website (linked to above) and Facebook page. To learn more, check out Huffington Post’s coverage of this growing phenomenon.

Stand With Malala

Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai has spent the last 3 years of her life in the pursuit of education and equality. As a result, she has spent the last 13 days in a hospital bed in Birmingham, England.

At 11 years old, Malala began blogging for the BBC. She ran an anonymous daily journal chronicling her struggles to get the education she deserved as a young Pakistani girl. When Malala’s blog became popular worldwide, her name was added to the byline. In 2011, Malala won both the International Peace Prize and the Pakistani Peace Prize. Malala’s maturity and wisdom served her well as she argued eloquently and passionately for girls’ educational rights in the Middle East and worldwide.

However, Malala’s open activism also made her a target. On October 9, a …

Ann Romney’s Appeal to Women

Ann Romney at the RNC

More than ever, the women’s vote is important in the 2012 Presidential Election. All of the attention around the politics of health care for women had made the Republican Party and the Romney campaign acutely aware that they must work to engage the female voting population and to convince them to vote Republican in November.

So on the first night for the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, Ann Romney stepped up to make an extended appeal to women. Her speech touched on her relationship with her husband, her struggles raising five children, and her belief that America would flourish under her husband’s direction. All of those appeals though rested on the idea that women – mothers and wives in particular – are the …

A Letter To Each Of You

I’m sure you’ve seen it in the news this week. The headlines are everywhere and my Twitter feed is decorated with rants from various people I follow: a man running for senate named Todd Akin used the term “legitimate rape” when asked about abortion legality. He has also used a modifier in the past, stating the phrase “forcible rape”. It is clear that the reality of “rape is rape” is lost on him.

Stepping away from the abortion debate, I wanted to address this because I know how upsetting it was to read that headline at first. My heart sunk. For ten seconds, I felt a mixture of anger and sadness and frustration, as if all of the work I put into this topic just continues to fade into the …